Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

“He was unarmed,” said Cecily. “He had no hounds.”


“Still. There must be some rational explanation. If he was a stag transformed into a man, where did he get clothes? Does he keep them stashed under a bush somewhere?”

Portia asked, “Are you calling Cecily a liar?”

“Not at all,” Brooke replied evenly. “But after a traumatic event like that, it would be perfectly understandable if she were confused, overwrought…”

“I am not mad,” Cecily insisted, letting her butter knife clatter to her plate. “I know what I saw. I am not the sort of hysterical female who imagines things.”

“Are you sure?” Luke sipped his coffee. “Are you certain you’re not exactly that sort of female? The type to harbor romantic illusions and cling to them for years, hoping they’ll one day become the truth?”

Ah, if looks could fillet a man, Luke would have been breakfast. But he would rather have Cecily’s anger than her indifference, and for the first time in nine days, that was what he was sensing from her. Whatever, or whoever, she had encountered in the forest—be it man, animal, or something in-between—it had captured her imagination, and her loyalty as well. Those treasures that had so recently, if undeservedly, belonged to him.

Not anymore. The way she defended her tale so stridently, the lively spark in her eyes, the fetching blush staining her throat… Luke felt these subtle signals like jabs to his gut.

She was falling out of love with him. And fast.

“I’ve known Cecily all my life,” Denny said from the head of the table. “She’s an intelligent woman, both sensible and resourceful. She’s also my guest, and I won’t have her truthfulness or sanity questioned over breakfast.” He propped one forearm on the table and leaned forward, fixing Luke with what was, for ever-affable Denny, a surprisingly stern glare.

Luke acknowledged it with a slight nod. If he must surrender her to this man, it was some solace to see Denny was capable of protecting her. In a breakfast room, at least, if not a cursed forest.

Denny turned to Cecily and laid a hand on her wrist. “If you say you encountered a werestag last night, I believe you. Implicitly.”

“Thank you, Denny.” She gave him a warm smile.

How sweet. Truly, it made Luke’s stomach churn.

Ignoring Brooke’s grumbling objection, Luke swiped a roll from his neighbor’s plate and chewed it moodily. He ought to be rejoicing, he supposed, or at least feeling relieved. She should forget him, she should marry Denny, the two of them should be disgustingly happy.

But Luke could not be so charitable. For four years, she’d held on to that memory of their first, innocent kiss—and he had too. And he liked believing that no matter what occurred in the future—even if she married Denny, even if an ocean divided them—his and Cecily’s thoughts would always wander back to the same place: that graying bench tucked beneath the arbor in Swinford Manor’s side garden. He didn’t want to believe that she could forget that night. But even now, as she buttered another point of toast, he could sense her mind straying…and she wasn’t kissing him on a garden bench. She was deep in the forest with a blasted white stag.

Damn it, it wasn’t right. When she lay abed at night, she shouldn’t see charging boars and violent tussles. She should dream of the scent of night-blooming jasmine and the texture of organdy and the distant strains of an orchestra playing a stately sarabande. As he had, all those freezing, damp nights. As he would, in all the bitter years to come.

What had she called him, last night? An insufferable, arrogant cad. Yes, he was. He wanted Cecily pining for him forever, dreaming she could tame him, yearning for the tender love he could never, ever give. He wanted her to remember the old Luke, not fantasize about some uncivilized beast. And if this “werestag” had eclipsed the memory of their kiss with his gory midnight rescue…

Luke just would have to do it one better, and give Cecily a new memory to occupy her thoughts. An experience she could never forget.





DENNY DID NOT PLAY THE PIANOFORTE. No one in his household did. Yet when Cecily sat down to the instrument that afternoon, she found it recently polished and tuned to a crisp perfection. He must have had that done for her, in anticipation of her visit. Always so thoughtful, Denny.

Her fingers lingered over the keys, coaxing a somber melody from the instrument.

“Is that my funeral march?” Luke’s deep drawl, from somewhere behind her.

She froze to her fingertips.